John Moore: Rob Ford never was ‘Rob Ford’

Rob Ford was always a nice idea: a fiscal hawk who was going to roll up his sleeves and straighten out the city hall of Canada’s biggest city. He would re-invent civic government and watch every dollar, apply common-sense private-sector practices, and shrink Toronto’s administration down to just the right size.

In practice, Rob Ford has done none of this since his election in 2010, but his fervent supporters were so enamored with the idea of Rob Ford that they became complicit in covering up for real-life-Rob-Ford’s failures.

Now that Toronto’s Chief of Police has confirmed that the mayor does indeed appear in a 2013 cell-phone video appearing to smoke crack cocaine, Ford’s defenders are digging trenches. His lawyer says: You can’t prove it’s crack. A woman called my radio station to say that as a sculptor she could understand how someone could fashion a plastic mask to look like the mayor. Many argue they would rather a crack-smoking mayor than any of his sober rivals.

It’s understandable that some conservatives would do what they can to protect Rob Ford. This is a city that votes left. That a right-wing-seeming populist was elected in 2010 was historic. And the ardency of his cult following goes beyond his place on the political spectrum. He’s a Hugo Chavez character: a satisfyingly big finger poked in the eye of the traditional power holders.

But the flesh-and-blood Rob Ford never was the Rob Ford of the conservative imagination.

His fans will rhyme off a list of his accomplishments, which on inspection are not really all that spectacular. He contracted our garbage collection in a city that already had private trash collection. He negotiated a labour deal with a union that agreed in advance to a wage freeze.

There has been no streamlining, and the billions in efficiencies promised by the mayor during his campaign have never materialized

Ford uses voodoo math to insist that he has saved a billion tax dollars. In fact, his most recent budget was $200-million larger than the previous mayor’s last budget. That beats inflation, and is worthy of praise on that basis, but it’s not transformational government.

The streets of Toronto are no cleaner and no less congested. Services and employees that should have been shed are still on the books. There has been no streamlining, and the billions in efficiencies promised by the mayor during his campaign have never materialized.

Callers to my radio station will frequently say “I don’t care if he smokes crack so long as he keeps my taxes low.” But even the mayor’s reputation on taxes falls short. He canceled one and raised others to pay for an ill-conceived transit plan. He has reduced the city’s payroll through attrition to the point where services are now falling short, and he left the city on the hook for millions in penalties for projects he delayed or cancelled.

The real Rob Ford has proven to be a policy improviser who arrives late in the morning for work and spends hours off the clock wandering through public housing and in shadowy meetings with an accused drug dealer. On many occasions he demonstrates an alarming lack of knowledge of the city and how it works.

Is this a man conservatives want to claim for their own?

The notion that Toronto is going to descend into wanton socialism without Rob Ford at the helm is ridiculous. There are plenty of worthy candidates to carry on a campaign of fiscal probity and smaller government. And frankly, there are plenty of liberals who would vote for them, too.

National Post

John Moore is host of the “Moore in the Morning” show on Newstalk 1010 radio in Toronto.

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